


Rebound

by threewalls



Category: Gokusen (TV)
Genre: Bruises, Fights, High School, M/M, Sado-Masochism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-23
Updated: 2011-01-23
Packaged: 2017-10-15 00:38:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/155265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/threewalls/pseuds/threewalls
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><cite>Ryu thinks he's got it figured out when he's sixteen and he and Hayato get stood up by a pair of girls from Momo High. After half an hour waiting, they shake it off for billiards. Hayato whines a whole lot, leaning over the table to line up shots. It's the best date Ryu has never gone on.</cite></p><p>Spoilers to episode 7.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rebound

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Apply Ice to Reduce Swelling](https://archiveofourown.org/works/111549) by [threewalls](https://archiveofourown.org/users/threewalls/pseuds/threewalls). 



Ryu thinks he's got it figured out when he's sixteen and he and Hayato get stood up by a pair of girls from Momo High. After half an hour waiting, they shake it off for billiards. Hayato whines a whole lot, leaning over the table to line up shots. It's the best date Ryu has never gone on.

That's when Ryu stops going on dates organised by his friends, starts turning down the girls that ask him about _their_ friends. Hayato is an idiot and he's hopeless with girls. He still hangs out with Ryu the most.

When he's eighteen (nearly nineteen), Ryu figures out that he had no idea. While they're waiting for their parents (his father, Hayato's brother) to come collect them, Ryu asks to visit the toilets. His body is tense with adrenaline; he and Hayato haven't fought like this, for real, for years.

Ryu stands with his back against the wall of the toilet stall, and thinks about the bruise on Hayato's face. It's dark and purple and the bastards from Ara High didn't put it there. Ryu's knuckles tingle in memory, as they get inside his zip; he remembers exactly the sound his fist had made at impact and the grunt Hayato made a moment later, when it started to hurt. Ryu wants to lick the bruise, taste it, maybe bite Hayato or hit him again. Hit him again and again until Hayato's wearing Ryu's bruises like temporary tattoos everywhere under his clothes.

Ryu bites his lip to keep quiet. He looks at his sticky hand, and feels sick. He's never come so fast.

When the tenth rolls around, Ryu gets restless. It's not the classes he misses, but he is bored out of his mind. Ryu goes looking for a job, the rougher the better, because it means his father doesn't know whether to praise or berate him. And sitting around his room, jerking off to Hayato, sullen and angry and his skin exposed purple-white, is just too pathetic.

\---

Hayato likes fighting. He's shit at school stuff, but awesome in a fight. He likes the ones that last the best, when it's not just about who hit first, but about who's the strongest, who can take the most hits and keep coming back for more. Who's standing at the end. Hayato likes it best when he can feel the bruises on his body later, being able to feel knowing that he won every time he moves, tasting victory when he licks his split lip. He tells all the other guys he can't feel a thing.

Except Ryu, who just looked at Hayato the first time he tried it, like he knew Hayato was full of so much shit. And later, when it was just the two of them, he said, "mine hurt, too," and reached over for Hayato's hand, fingers bending carefully in between Hayato's bruised knuckles (punching people hurts! Who knew?). "Doesn't mean we didn't win."

Ryu's awesome at fighting, too, so it makes sense that fighting with him -- against him, beside him, whatever -- is better. More fire than you'd think in such a skinny bitch, though Hayato would knock down anyone else who tried to say that. They're tight again, now, after the shit with Ara High. Ryu is the best back-up ever in a fight. He's always where Hayato needs him in a fight. Fights defensive, because Ryu's always been the sort to avoid rather than take punches from the other guy, but he never pulls his own strikes.

At least, not until they all do. Like today.

Tanabe from Todoroki is a shithead. Fucking with Tsucchi's chances like that, just a month before graduation.

These shouldn't feel like the good kind of bruises to Hayato, but they do, lighting up under his left hand like instant replay. They fucking hurt, too, even if you can't see them yet. Hayato can't stop touching them.

They got the shit beat out of them today, him and Ryu and Tsucchi and Take and Hyuga. Yamaguchi says it's a kind of winning. That they promised they wouldn't fight, and didn't, but Yamaguchi says all kinds of crazy shit. They got the shit beat out of them, you know? Hayato took hits from fucking Tanabe from fucking Todoroki and his goons, just let them, taking hits here, and here, and here, and Hayato can almost feel Ryu's eyes, gone narrow and dark, still cutting into his back, watching all the hits connect.

The water drowns out the sounds Hayato makes when he comes. He slumps down, sitting on the floor of the shower, and pushes sopping wet hair out of his face. Hayato's jerked off to thoughts of pretty sunrises and that full feeling of almost too much ramen, and Yankumi handing him his arse, laying him out flat on his back on the ground, so this isn't the weirdest thing ever, but--

But then Taku's banging on the bathroom door, yelling at Hayato not to use all the hot water, and Hayato's calling him a brat, rinsing soap from his body.

There's a moment at school the next day, when Hayato turns too quick, bites the inside of his lip because Yabuki Hayato does not feel pain like baby kouhai. He catches Ryu watching him, and thinks that there was something he didn't want to tell Ryu, but he can't remember what it was.


End file.
